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Monopoly Mail

Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service

By Douglas K. Adie

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$6.95

Available formats

Available formats

About the Book

First-class postage has risen from 6 cents in 1971 to 25 cents today, but despite the continual price increases, service has deteriorated. By its own admission, the U.S. Postal Service takes much longer to deliver first-class mail than it did in the 1960’s.

In this volume Ohio University economist Douglas K. Adie details the Postal Service’s failings — an inability to innovate, soaring labor costs, huge deficits, chronic inefficiency, and declining service standards — and contends that ending its monopoly over first-class mail delivery would eliminate them. He notes that whereas monopoly breeds inefficiency, high costs, and stagnation, competition would produce efficiency and innovation.

Adie offers a provocative plan to privatize and deregulate the Postal Service in order to permit competition within the industry. Having described how consumers, entrepreneurs, and workers have benefited from the partial deregulation of other industries, he forecasts tremendous gains from deregulated letter delivery. He concludes that privatization and deregulation would enable the Postal Service to enter the 21st Century as a modern, efficient company that could provide American consumers with the kind of mail service that a complex economy demands.

About the Author

Douglas K. Adie, Chair, Managerial Economics, and Professor of Economics at Yorktownuniversity.com, has taught Economics at Ohio University since 1968. He has testified before Congressional Committees on the unemployment effects of minimum wages and the advisability of privatizing the US Postal Service.

What Others Have Said

“The burden of showing that the postal monopoly is necessary or desirable has not been met. If the private-express statutes were repealed, the spur of competition would mean improvements in the Postal Service itself. Private enterprise will get the mail delivered — just as it did in the Old West.”—James C. Miller III, Former Director Office of Management and Budget

“If we as a nation really believe in competition, we should advocate it for mail service as we do for other industries… The point of repealing the monopoly statute is to increase the liberty of our citizens.”—Daniel Oliver, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission